The World Is Mine For The Taking

"S-Stomach?!" I blurted out, my voice cracking from both confusion and disbelief. "I have absolutely no idea what you’ve done, but..." I tightened my grip on my gun, steadied my aim, and pointed it directly at her chest. "You made a huge mistake coming here and standing right in front of me."

The moment those words left my mouth, I opened fire without giving her another chance to speak.

My finger kept squeezing the trigger over and over as bullet after bullet flew straight toward her body. The loud cracks of gunfire echoed throughout the tent while empty shell casings clattered across the floor in every direction.

I kept firing without the slightest hesitation until the magazine had been completely emptied.

Only after hearing the final click did I finally lower my gun and look at her.

I expected to see her collapsed on the ground, bleeding from countless wounds.

Instead, she remained standing exactly where she had been from the very beginning.

A relaxed smile still rested on her face as though nothing unusual had happened.

The bullets I had fired hadn’t done any damage whatsoever.

Rather than tearing through her body, every single bullet slowly disappeared beneath the surface, swallowed whole by the strange blue substance that made up her body. Looking more carefully, I realized it didn’t even resemble skin anymore. It looked like a thick mass of slime that absorbed everything touching it without leaving even the smallest ripple behind.

She simply continued smiling while calmly accepting everything I had thrown at her.

By the time my gun was completely empty, I could only stare at her in stunned silence while trying to make sense of what I’d just witnessed.

"W-What..." I muttered before raising my voice despite myself. "What exactly are you supposed to be?!"

"I’m a slime," she answered with a playful smile that almost seemed proud of itself. "You’ve heard of slimes before, haven’t you?"

A slime?

This woman was seriously telling me she was a slime?

Of course I had heard about slimes before.

We had gone through countless briefings before coming here, and slimes were always described as weak monsters that could be defeated without much trouble. They were supposed to be among the easiest creatures to deal with.

So why the hell wasn’t this one dying?

Then another part of the briefing suddenly resurfaced in my memory.

Fire.

Slimes were supposedly weak against fire attacks.

Without wasting another second, I grabbed one of my explosive grenades before immediately throwing it straight toward her.

The grenade flew directly into her body without missing its target.

Just like the bullets before it, however, the grenade simply sank into the surface of her slime body as though it had fallen into deep water.

The instant it disappeared completely beneath the surface, it began melting away.

An explosion never came.

It simply dissolved inside her body without accomplishing anything at all.

"Hehe~"

She let out a quiet laugh that carried far too much amusement for my liking.

The sound alone made it obvious she was openly making fun of me.

"You...!"

The veins on my forehead immediately began bulging as irritation surged through my body. Seeing that smug smile sitting comfortably on her face made my blood boil almost instantly.

Still, I somehow managed to force myself to stay calm despite how badly I wanted to wipe that expression away.

By this point, I knew this creature was far more dangerous than anything I had been prepared for.

Charging at her without understanding what she could actually do would probably get me killed before I even realized I’d made a mistake.

I needed more information.

Understanding my enemy first would give me a much better chance than blindly throwing myself into another attack.

That approach had always worked better anyway.

"You’re not coming at me?" she asked with a curious tilt of her head. "Alright then."

A wider grin slowly spread across her face.

"I’ll just come to you instead."

The instant those words left her mouth, I didn’t even have enough time to blink before something happened.

She was already standing directly in front of me.

The distance between us had disappeared completely.

"Ah..."

That small sound had barely escaped my lips before her mouth suddenly opened wider than should have been physically possible.

It stretched farther and farther until it looked large enough to swallow my entire body without any difficulty.

Before I could even think about reacting, that enormous mouth closed around me.

She swallowed me whole without giving me any opportunity to fight back.

***

Leon’s POV

After telling Beelzebub to head toward the commander’s tent ahead of me, I followed shortly after without rushing.

Curiously enough, there weren’t any guards standing outside anymore.

That alone told me she had probably already dealt with them before I even arrived.

When I stepped inside the tent, I was immediately greeted by a scene that looked like it had come straight out of some disturbing horror story.

Beelzebub stood calmly in the middle of the tent while her mouth stretched to an impossible size as she slowly swallowed an entire man whole.

His body steadily disappeared deeper and deeper into her mouth until nothing remained outside anymore.

The process looked disturbingly effortless from beginning to end.

The moment his body completely disappeared inside her...

She dissolved him almost instantly without leaving behind the slightest trace.

"You really don’t hold back, do you?" I asked while watching the unbelievable scene unfold before my eyes.

"Well, I am the Sin of Greed," she replied with a carefree shrug. "It’s only natural for me to satisfy my endless hunger."

Considering how much she had already eaten over the last several days, I honestly couldn’t believe she still wasn’t full.

Her appetite honestly seemed completely ridiculous at this point.

A bottomless pit would probably get full before she ever did.

Right after finishing that sentence, she suddenly leaned forward slightly.

A surprisingly loud burp escaped from her mouth as she puffed out her cheeks in an almost cartoonishly exaggerated way before releasing what sounded like an absurd amount of trapped air.

The whole thing looked strangely funny despite everything that had happened just moments earlier.

Then something unexpected happened immediately afterward.

A single boot suddenly popped out of her mouth.

"Oops," she said with a sheepish little smile that somehow made the situation even stranger.

Before the boot even had the chance to touch the floor, her tongue shot forward at incredible speed, stretching several feet through the air before wrapping tightly around the boot.

She immediately pulled it back into her mouth before swallowing it all over again as though absolutely nothing unusual had happened.

"Food isn’t supposed to be wasted like that."

She sounded so casual while saying it that anyone walking in halfway through the conversation might have thought she was talking about leftovers after dinner instead of a boot that had just come out of her mouth.

Honestly, after watching all of that happen right in front of me, I had absolutely no idea what I was even supposed to say anymore.